Stephen Duncombe

Stephen Duncombe, along with Steve Lambert, both consider themselves engaged citizens and agree that using art and culture to transform the world is a good idea. But they are both haunted by the same question: How do we gauge the success of our projects? Hell, how do we even think about success when our goal is utopia?

Eyebeam Yearbooks

Tagged with: Stephen Duncombe

Ethan Zuckerman has posted a beautiful piece that stitches together many of the ideas we deal with in How To Win and the Center for Artistic Activism. I can’t recommend it enough:
Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts
It ties together polarization, confirmation bias, the media, David Simon and The Wire, and the need for addressing values and narrative before facts.
I’ll post it here for the sake of archiving:
Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts
by Ethan Zuckerman

We thought: culture is much more important than politics. Let’s just start getting people living the way they wanna live.
You wanna live in a world where you don’t have to work? Let’s make it.
You wanna live in a world where you can get food for free? Let’s make it.
You wanna live in a house with lots of women and men and live the way you want? Let’s do it.
Let’s make the world that you imagine real by acting it out.
And if you can act it out, it’s real.
– Peter Coyote on The Diggers
From a PBS documentary on The Diggers.

The Next Generation of New Urbanists yes, these are young New Urbanists, because New Urbanism has been around long enough that it’s getting a little … old and the Street Plans Collaborative want to help. They’ve put together a “Tactical Urbanism” guide that you can download for use when you need some ideas about how to catalyze lasting change in your urban world.
Examples include guerrilla gardening, pop-up cafés, mobile vendors, and “Build a Better Block” projects. Most involve partnership with government agencies or local business owners, but they are almost all things that ordinary folks can initiate. Here’s how the guide’s authors explain the concept of “tactical urbanism”: